Try this contest for grades 3-12. Entries are due Feb. 25.
I’ve stumbled upon another student writing contest that middle schoolers may enter: the Carl Sandburg Student Poetry Contest.
The sponsors invite students to submit a poem to the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site’s annual Student Poetry Contest. “The contest encourages youth to explore writing their own poetry, and is open to students nationwide!” reads the contest’s website.
Sponsors intend the contest to honor and extend the legacy that Carl Sandburg made on the American literary canon with his poetry and journalism. Sandburg published an anthology of poetry in 1916 titled “Chicago Poems” that earned him a spot among the literary elite.
Each year’s contest has a different theme. This year’s theme is “Joy.” Students are encouraged to write poems that speak of joy in momentous occasions or small moments.
The judges evaluate how well a student’s entry communicates the theme, so make sure your students are clear with the theme; however, students can relate and celebrate joy however they wish in their poetry entries.
The 2018 theme was “Dreams.” Here’s the first place 6th-8th grade poem appears below. Use it as a mentor text. Other winning entries are found here.
First Place
dear moth wings by Kiran Narula
he tore you from your body, stripped you
to a thin sheet like papyrus. you are paper
from a book without its spine,
words in disarray, meaning turned meaningless.
his fingers were warning signs,
holding your delicacy between his thumb
and forefinger. he left you in dirt, i don’t know
if you held onto something else that could
move you, caught onto the threads of a shoelace
from the kids who ran in the field
or mended yourself to a flower’s center,
broke the pattern of pink petals with your beige,
blended with something that you could become.
you are only what is left, the shell of a body,
pulled away from what rooted you.
i wonder what it’s like to be ripped at the seams,
fall apart like loosened thread, nothing to stitch
yourself to. you used to beat like timpani, now you are
fragments of scales and chitin and veins,
a lampshade without a light.
do you have purpose if you are
separated from your stem –
are you still wings if you cannot fly?
i guess skin is still skin without bones.
For the 2019 contest, find guidelines here and download this submission form.
The guidelines do limit teachers to sending in three poems per classroom. (I wanted to clarify the limit, but at the time of this post, the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site was closed due to the federal government shutdown. I will attempt to email them after the shutdown to find out more.)
Poems must be mailed, faxed (what?!) or hand-delivered by February 25, 2019; that date is slightly less than a month away, so you still have time for your students to put some ideas together and enter.
In addition, there are some specific requirements to follow, so double-check the guidelines before mailing. For example, no staples may be used to fasten their materials, and the submission form must be signed by the student, a parent, plus the teacher.
This is a new contest for me. I’ve never had students enter it before; however, I may just have my sixth-graders give it a try next month. Seventh- and eighth-graders will be deep in other projects next month, but sixth-graders should be ready to dive into “Joy.”
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